Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

The thing about black hat techniques isn't that they don't work, its that they not always sustainable. Which is why every time Google release an update there are a dozen threads talking about how they got hit.

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Some of you guys clearly have no idea wtf blackhat even means, I hate to say. Gaming the seo system by backlinks and interlinking is NOT blackhat. "but man, i automate web 2.0s and get mad links!!"

/golfclap

Hell, if you want to argue what IS blackhat, go talk to some of the guys who do sql injections to hack sites to post out brand new pages with their own spun content to get ranked on Google. That shit is blackhat my friends. And don't get me started on cookie stuffing and redirects. Back in the day, there were a bunch of us pulling $1000's a day through different ad farms just based on doing botnet distributions of cookie redirects for amazon/ebay and any other profit tunnel we could milk.

Arguing over what "blackhat" tools like senuke or ultimate demon can do for your rankings is not blackhat

Just because Matt Cutts says what you do is blackhat, isn't even remotely close to what it actually is.

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

The only people saying BH is dead are the sheeple that read something from some person "in the know" then go around repeating it all over IM forums creating the mass sheeple effect its a fucking vicious circle! and we got plenty of sheeple around here, worse still are the ones claiming a bh network is dead when its clearly very much alive and producing results daily only to release "the super duper magic beans undetected network - grow your beanstalks bigger than jacks" or some similar made up frabricated crap.

Meh I never listen to this shit, I listen to hard evidence and facts, I'm tracking over 4k keywords all of which are using bh techniques done by my team so the hard evidence I see daily tells me not to listen to sheeple and their misinformed opinions

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

But in all seriousness, you're going to have different groups of users on here:

1) The POWER USER: you know (or might not) know who they are. They have every tool in the book, know how to tier out backlinks, which web 2.0 properties to glean authority from, and how to spin content so well it might have been written by the hand of christ himself. At the end of the day, this stuff still isn't blackhat. It's gaming the system based on the algo code which Google has dictated to us over all these years. Some of these guys are constantly making new sites or modifying current ones to match monthly/quarterly updates by Google to adjust on the fly to this algo. These people are great SEO people because they work at the game. And this game is SEO, not blackhatting.

2) The NOOB: lol, look around you. There are a TON of them on here..from all different types of countries as well- including mine the grand 'ole United States of America. Back in the day when it made sense to go there because it was actually a good hub for discussion, the problem blew up at digital point when DP was targeted as the SEO service king center of the WORLD. The noob influx was incredible to the point that it was just time to leave. Get in the car, sit down, buckle up, throw it into gear and get the fuck out of Dodge. I mean don't kid yourself if you think to yourself "oh, it wasn't THAT bad". No. It was. Really. It didn't help that you had Indians, Philipinos coming en masse in fucking droves to drive service offering prices down to shit levels...and along with that was the quality. That's not a racist view, that's a geocentric perspective based on market value of services being offered. But hey, if someone wants to pay for "x" percentage quality..I get it...but the point is with a lot of these new service providers came everyones uncle, aunt, and brother who wants to know why:

"Hell, please tell me why I no rank for the term COKE"
"Has anyone heard of Senuke, and is it good? Will it rank my site number 1?"
"What is the best seo program?"
"Free whatchamacallit tool??! Does anyone know where i can get the BEST free yadda yadda yadda???"
"Dropship from here?!?"
"How to build quality links?"
"5 ways to improve your seo"..and then the idiot posting the thread reposts an article blasted to over a million article directories like it was some deep nugget of truth to share with everyone....

but back on point, yea, noobs gotta start someplace..I just wished we confined them to their own subforum so that some of the big boys of the industry can go play in their own sandbox. But then, that's what the VIP areas of the online world are used for?

3) The ASK-A-MILLION-QUESTIONS-GUY-ABOUT-POPULAR-PRODUCTS-BUT-DONT-HAVE-THE-TIME-TO-READ-THE-WHOLE-FUCKING-THREAD - See number 2. But honestly, these guys will never get it. The idea of a "GURU" is fucking mystical to them.

4) The UNDERGROUND PEEPS: Ahh, the secret bunch. Now we're talking. They talk mainly through PM's mostly..trade tidbits here and there with like minded individuals. It's not terribly hard to spot the GOOD folks of tradecraft on this forum when they pop up in threads. Here's the interesting thing: we all bash the WarriorForum, and rightly so, but there are a bunch of us here who use that place for our own devices and wear many hats/monikers. The underground people have been around for a while and have come up through the ranks so to speak. We do NOT shun areas of the web because of reputation. We actually may see a use for some of these sites when others just bash them because it's the cool thing to do. So the very people we revere over here, also have a place over there at that table. Mind boggling, isn't it?

You know why cattle ranchers make a killing, literaly and figuratively? Because they raise and slaughter their profit and control when and where it takes place. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. It's so damn easy. When you have a million noobs in one area looking to take handouts of info from anyone who can put together what remotely looks like the profile of a guru to them, and then the guru leads them around by their hand all the while planting seeds of "list growing" and telling them "what products they need to own", its no wonder how and why it works. Just another way to make money. I literally can't stand the term GURU and want to faceplant anyone who uses it, but truth be told folks, these guys make BANK because they get it. Hate them or love them, their profit tunnel was built on the backs of others and they learned what works and what doesn't inside the INTERNET MARKETING game.

But back on point, the underground peeps are usually the brightest and the most innovative of the bunch versus the other 95.5% bunch of SENUKE/BACKLINK kiddies on here. Secret sauce stuff DOES exist, but again..some of it is REAL blackhat shit that most of you reading this have absolutely no business in ever touching. EVER. If you could push button some of the shit out there, it would do tons of real damage in the hands of an amateur. Or it would raise the awareness levels of certain things, that if exposed, would drop the curtain for everyone who was hiding behind it doing their own thing.

Really, do you want to know how to inject your code into wordpress sites and piggyback on the doorgenerator pages deployed over a 1000 different stagnant version 2 or 3 wordpress installations? Do you feel comfortable making a buck like that? That shit will get you ranked REAL fast, but the come down is pretty bad too once you fuck up and leave an audit trail pointing back to you or your "service provider" or "va" who is doing it for you. The profit potential is all there, but the risk liability is as well.

5) The NORMAL dude: this is pretty much everyone else that has to read the forum base with their bullshit filters turned on high. All most of us want to know is how to position our web properties appropriately and to gleam the knowledge to rank our stuff higher..i mean, that is the name of the game right? We don't build sites for fun because if we did, I'd tell you to get your geek ass outside and go find something else to do LOL. Some folks do it to make $5 a day and others go after the whole nut - $1k a day or more. Again, global perspective is such that people can live, actually subsist off of sites that earn $10/day. I'm not naive. But in the end, we're here to make money no matter how much and how it fits our needs. How we all get there is another story all together.

I can tell you how I ranked my last site that I built 2 months ago to get it to number 2 in a highly competitive marketspace jammed to the gills with the big boys. I could. But here's a little nugget of TRUTH: what worked for me probably will NOT work for you due to the specific circumstances of my niche, and the amount of work that had to be done to get there specifically for that site. Why do you think that people hire SEO practitioners who charge XXX amount to : analyze, implement, test, adjust, create content and track metrics for a client site over a period of time?

No really, why do you think people do that? BECAUSE it's real world analysis of a position point to extrapolate on and determine what the best course of action is to do x,y and z with that website. You do not find that level of info in a backlinking tool. Ever. If you think it's one click and go bring me da money, I've got news for you.

But wait, you may tell me "Shut it dude, i'm making money with senuke and this tool and that tool, you don't know shit". Yea, good for you bud, I'm literally yawning when I hear people saying that. You know why? Perspective. Come back and tell me when you've scaled your operations to have to handle several paypal accounts, adsense accounts, had to open a couple of llc's to deal with the ad network people and have invested multiple thousands of dollars in actual hardware investment in your own dell and hp servers on a fiber backbone in a colo just so you can run your own proxies among other things.

I'm not saying backlinking tools don't work, but they're just a tool like medicine attempts to treat the symptom, not the cause. In the end, all you may be is small potatos due perspective. Your willingness may be there, but if you think buying one tool will help you "rank number 1" you're in the wrong game pal, and definitely in the wrong forum to ramp up knowledge wise...in my humble opinion. You are best served by:

1) Shutting your mouth (figuritavely) and reading everything you can from reputable members on here
2) Using the search box on top of the page for questions you have about things
3) Actually thinking before you speak and asking the forumbase that same fucking question that has been asked and answered about a million times
4) Understanding the basic principles of what "search engine optimization" actually is before you A) ask the question and B) buy another tool to use

That's it. You want to know how to win? Right there. Peel it, cook it up, eat it, and leave the table stuffed.

Rhetorically speaking, does it really matter to anyone that I had 20 tier 3 articles pointed to 40 tier 2 web properties which were then pointed to 10 specific tier one properties which ultimately got drip fed into several social postings over a period of time? I'd posit: no. Again, it worked for me because i did the actual SEO analysis to affect what I thought were the weak points in the rest of the authority serps to position my site.

There is NO magic formula, no matter what the software package/creator/seller tells you. I love this place because there are a lot of great tools from developers, mostly active on here, that really work. But don't be fooled by the copy being used to sell the product. Do work flow analysis. Ask yourself if this tool will actually help you as part of the process to do x,y,z. Do an ROI analysis..will it help you save/make money? Can you outsource what you need to do and still come out ahead or will it make more sense to own it based on you have to promote and the scale that you need? I've been in the software game before, and I gotta be honest, it's pretty damn lucrative if one of your tools take off in popularity. Sure, you need good customer handling skills and framework in place, a roadmap to code to, scope creep to be managed and code that actually WORKS, but the money is there for good devs. Little tidbit of info before I get off this rant, lol, during the gold rush of the 1890's in the United States, who do you think made the most money? It wasn't the actual gold miners, of which there were MANY running out to the western United States to prospect and get rich.

Nope, it was the dude at entrance of the mine selling the shovels. Swill that in your mouth a bit before swallowing

You need to test, analyze, redeploy, build and test again. Once you replicate a formula that works for you, run with it and own it. That my friends is the ONLY way to make all this shit work for you, no matter if you have 1 "blackhat" tool, or all of them in your arsenal. Get out there and pull that trigger.

There, some "guru" advice from someone who absolutely loathes that term (because I see through it for what it actually is and what's going on in terms of manipulation). The underground peeps wont say shit to the public, and those smart web marketers who figured out what works will either keep it to themselves or sell it as a 20 page ebook on WF to make some quick coin once the technique has died out.

What I personally find this forum really good for, is the discussion of the stuff behind the scenes and trying to "group analyze" what Google is doing either on their pre-prod index or their actual production index of which we're all affected by. We know, or think we do, what Google bases an index position on for any given site, but pay attention to those posters who try to deep dive analyze it and then help contribute to that discussion. Or if you see a tool that could benefit from a really great idea, suggest it up because it may make sense to add it in from which we can all benefit. I did a request recently for I think, Backlink Miner, that I hope the devs incorporate. It could potentially make them a lot of money and give us more insight into how Google does what it does.

The other thing I find this site good for, isn't so much the actual techniques for making money, because y'all need to be honest with yourselves, no one in their right mind would give up what works for them only to have some guy spread the word and saturate the living hell out of it. Right? Let's not bullshit ourselves. Although every once in a while a noob will create a thread about making $5 a day and spill the beans about everything..LOL..god bless them, they know not what they do BUT, you can still read and absorb what posted techniques are here and look to come in at another angle with the posted technique. Thinking outside the box and integrating partial ideas about what's been discussed into your own means and methods. That's the good stuff right there. If anything, it's just another way to make money on the other seo websites once you regurgitate and throw it all up back into a 20 page pdf proclaiming your "This Noob Makes 4,424$ a day Using THIS EXACT TECHNIQUE!". Not hating the game, just telling it like it is.

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Some of you guys clearly have no idea wtf blackhat even means, I hate to say. Gaming the seo system by backlinks and interlinking is NOT blackhat. "but man, i automate web 2.0s and get mad links!!"

/golfclap

Hell, if you want to argue what IS blackhat, go talk to some of the guys who do sql injections to hack sites to post out brand new pages with their own spun content to get ranked on Google. That shit is blackhat my friends. And don't get me started on cookie stuffing and redirects. Back in the day, there were a bunch of us pulling $1000's a day through different ad farms just based on doing botnet distributions of cookie redirects for amazon/ebay and any other profit tunnel we could milk.

Arguing over what "blackhat" tools like senuke or ultimate demon can do for your rankings is not blackhat

Just because Matt Cutts says what you do is blackhat, isn't even remotely close to what it actually is.

Straight up brother.
2 things to mention: First off, all these fucking "stats" don't say shit about E-A-R-N-I-N-G-S. I don't give a fuck all about where your bullshit little "niche" site is ranked and the 3 dollars a day you're making.
Another thing: Somewhere along the line, BHW got jacked off the rails and went from BLACKHAT WORLD to "How do I get backlinks".
Y'all have no fucking clue what blackhat really is.

I was actually going to post a separate thread recently about how I am fucking D-O-N-E with this niche site shit. I'm back at what made me over 100k a year and it aint backlinking strategies.

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Somewhere along the line, BHW got jacked off the rails and went from BLACKHAT WORLD to "How do I get backlinks".
Y'all have no fucking clue what blackhat really is.

Actually I sometimes feel BHW derailed from blackhat to "hey its my birthday" or "help, my paypal account has been limited" or still again "hey look, I'm Jr VIP now"..

I have been wanting to take a holiday from BHW for a few weeks just to avoid getting sucked in to futile threads.. however there is the rare useful thread once a week like http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackha...al-method.html that keeps me checking in in a daily basis.. What i find sad is that these threads get only 2-3 replies and get buried under an avalanche of BS threads that are not even about making money, let alone IM or even less BH IM.

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Interesting read.. I never fully understood what blackhat meant until now, thanks for your input guys. I remember reading a thread here about someone's site being hacked and a payday loans link was appended to his site's footer. Perhaps its time for me to spend some time on other forums as well >:-)

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Am I the only one who thinks that two months of work and he isn't even number 1 is just a waste of time?
The OP is kind of proving the opposite here. If it takes you 2 months of work just to get some profit of a website then blackhat or your method is definitely dying.

Originally Posted by cody41

Some of you guys clearly have no idea wtf blackhat even means, I hate to say. Gaming the seo system by backlinks and interlinking is NOT blackhat. "but man, i automate web 2.0s and get mad links!!"

/golfclap

Hell, if you want to argue what IS blackhat, go talk to some of the guys who do sql injections to hack sites to post out brand new pages with their own spun content to get ranked on Google. That shit is blackhat my friends. And don't get me started on cookie stuffing and redirects. Back in the day, there were a bunch of us pulling $1000's a day through different ad farms just based on doing botnet distributions of cookie redirects for amazon/ebay and any other profit tunnel we could milk.

Arguing over what "blackhat" tools like senuke or ultimate demon can do for your rankings is not blackhat

Just because Matt Cutts says what you do is blackhat, isn't even remotely close to what it actually is.

I actually hope that kind of blackhat dies. It has been a problem of mine ever since I started SEO. Most of my time used to be ranking legit websites and promoting products. But dang, I noticed 60% of the sales are being leeched out by coupon websites using parasitic redirects and codes. I still make the same money but I heavily dropped down on promoting products. In the end, it is really bad for the company that wants to promote their products, bad for the SEO guys and not a good direction for SEO.

I can say this because I'm very good at climbing the SERPS. It is just stupid that people who do not know how to SEO are making the same money as I am by leeching. On the bright side, I am most likely putting in a lot less effort than most people. But still in the end, we will all just going to be leechers.

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

So I just did some editing of my original post after my initial diatribe. What I'm trying to convey is that there is REAL blackhat and then there's pushbutton seo tools to game the seo industry. This site has moved well into that side of the world versus the original roots of where Diamond Dave brought the site up from. Don't get me wrong, a lot of real blackhat shit is illegal and morally reprehensible..but it's real. Hacking, infiltrating, embedding code, redirects, stuffing, etc, etc..all very real and used today. Ya think it's just the Chinese, Turks and Russians doing this shit around the world for "other reasons" related to bank card hacking, website defacing, and intel based hacks to sell govt info? Hell no. There are some people on THIS SITE that have made over a million dollars, yes, that amount, in gaming the system through backdoor means. Now, they may not be active, or active anymore, but yes way before this site became backlink tool and stupid question central in the main forums, this was the place for the thinktank to come to. The old guard is now spread out over the web and people do hold on to more than they did before, but that's only due to preservation in an already crowded space. That's just the reality of it.

Going to let you in on a little secret, and this is before VT scans for downloads and whatnot. But, there was a well known cracker who would crack seo proggries and distribute the crack to all of us across different forums. Some forums are more lax in terms of what's allowed for "blackhat" downloads and whatnot. Anyways, this guy was pushing cracks out with hidden, or FUD, code either in the root of the folder for the crack inside the rar that would NOT be picked up by most antivirus or he'd place it inside a folder inside the rar called..lol, get this, WALLPAPERS and place a jpg or gif inside that folder. So you know what would happen?

New Thread: "SENUKE CRACK ver 1.xx FULLY PORTABLE YADDA YADDA YADDA" - and then the sheep would start coming at the first sound of the shepherds bell. Like moths to a candle. White on rice. Stank on..ya get the point.

Million people want to get something for nothing, download the crack, use it, don't use it, complain it doens't work (LMAO @ this. You downloaded a crack you idiot..and you're complaining it doesn't work L.O.L) and they in turn rehost or reupload that crack to "keep the blackhat spirit alive".

You know what you're also keeping alive? That little iddy biddy undetectable code hidden inside the jpg inside the wallpaper folder Not every malware comes with a bow tied on it. And honestly, who the hell here can decompile in IDA PRO and walk through the code base to see what the hell is going on? Exactly. Either way, for many years and I'd argue right now as well, the crackers have been gaming you guys as well. Not saying all of them, but it'd be naive to think otherwise...just saying...and that my friends - is blackhat

The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to cody41 For This Useful Post:

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Interesting thread

It's good to know that some people are educated as to what blackhat actually is. I remember back in the day of my php/perl/cgi exploiting, xss and sql injection days. I wish I knew then what I know about SEO and marketing, I could of put the two together and make some right bank!

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Some of you guys clearly have no idea wtf blackhat even means, I hate to say. Gaming the seo system by backlinks and interlinking is NOT blackhat. "but man, i automate web 2.0s and get mad links!!"

/golfclap

Hell, if you want to argue what IS blackhat, go talk to some of the guys who do sql injections to hack sites to post out brand new pages with their own spun content to get ranked on Google. That shit is blackhat my friends. And don't get me started on cookie stuffing and redirects. Back in the day, there were a bunch of us pulling $1000's a day through different ad farms just based on doing botnet distributions of cookie redirects for amazon/ebay and any other profit tunnel we could milk.

Arguing over what "blackhat" tools like senuke or ultimate demon can do for your rankings is not blackhat

Just because Matt Cutts says what you do is blackhat, isn't even remotely close to what it actually is.

Couldn't agree more. Automated tools are just tools(like most of the people using them), not blackhat, whitehat, or greyhat. I can use the tool to post 100% unique handwritten articles and call it whitehat seo. Or I can use spun content and call it greyhat seo. Real blackhat is as you said, but also illegal.

But then, it's all a matter of perspective. There are no fixed definitions to this thing. I remember a dumbass whitehat who considered scraping data from a website blackhat because "It should have been done manually!". Extreme example, but I'm just trying to make a point.

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Originally Posted by leena

Black hat is not dead but all i can say is doing black hat seo is as difficult as white hat seo. But results come faster and last for less number of days. Depending upon your goals you can either do white hat or black hat seo.

Many members are posting ranking screenshots, how about posting some earning screenshots? here is mine with one of the cpa network(check 26th march profit, 27th march just started)-

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Wow, buncha pm's coming in from people i haven't talked to in awhile..good to reconnect again Didn't really mean to go off and rant, but this place has been slowly evolving into what it is, as most of the old timers know, and I just felt like it was time to say something. It is what it is, I get that. But I figured if I was reaching anyone new who only knew blackhat as SENUKE, well, it was time for a mini education lol

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Originally Posted by cody41

So I just did some editing of my original post after my initial diatribe. What I'm trying to convey is that there is REAL blackhat and then there's pushbutton seo tools to game the seo industry. This site has moved well into that side of the world versus the original roots of where Diamond Dave brought the site up from. Don't get me wrong, a lot of real blackhat shit is illegal and morally reprehensible..but it's real. Hacking, infiltrating, embedding code, redirects, stuffing, etc, etc..all very real and used today. Ya think it's just the Chinese, Turks and Russians doing this shit around the world for "other reasons" related to bank card hacking, website defacing, and intel based hacks to sell govt info? Hell no. There are some people on THIS SITE that have made over a million dollars, yes, that amount, in gaming the system through backdoor means. Now, they may not be active, or active anymore, but yes way before this site became backlink tool and stupid question central in the main forums, this was the place for the thinktank to come to. The old guard is now spread out over the web and people do hold on to more than they did before, but that's only due to preservation in an already crowded space. That's just the reality of it.

Going to let you in on a little secret, and this is before VT scans for downloads and whatnot. But, there was a well known cracker who would crack seo proggries and distribute the crack to all of us across different forums. Some forums are more lax in terms of what's allowed for "blackhat" downloads and whatnot. Anyways, this guy was pushing cracks out with hidden, or FUD, code either in the root of the folder for the crack inside the rar that would NOT be picked up by most antivirus or he'd place it inside a folder inside the rar called..lol, get this, WALLPAPERS and place a jpg or gif inside that folder. So you know what would happen?

New Thread: "SENUKE CRACK ver 1.xx FULLY PORTABLE YADDA YADDA YADDA" - and then the sheep would start coming at the first sound of the shepherds bell. Like moths to a candle. White on rice. Stank on..ya get the point.

Million people want to get something for nothing, download the crack, use it, don't use it, complain it doens't work (LMAO @ this. You downloaded a crack you idiot..and you're complaining it doesn't work L.O.L) and they in turn rehost or reupload that crack to "keep the blackhat spirit alive".

You know what you're also keeping alive? That little iddy biddy undetectable code hidden inside the jpg inside the wallpaper folder Not every malware comes with a bow tied on it. And honestly, who the hell here can decompile in IDA PRO and walk through the code base to see what the hell is going on? Exactly. Either way, for many years and I'd argue right now as well, the crackers have been gaming you guys as well. Not saying all of them, but it'd be naive to think otherwise...just saying...and that my friends - is blackhat

That's all true, the methods you keep ranting about are black hat but they aren't SEO. This thread is in the SEO section so I don't know where you are trying to go with this.

As far as for the blackhat SEO methods from 5-10 years ago like keyword stuffing, cloaking, redirects, etc... most of them don't work anymore. Hence the reason why automated tools and networks are the primary topics posted here.

And as you mentioned SQL injections for links, yea they work, but being that it's illegal and this is a public forum it's not discussed here. Not to mention SQL injections aren't even all that impressive, any script kiddie can do it.

Edit: That sounded a bit more harsh than I intended. I understand you're frustrated with the large number of 'gurus' and newbies that consider everything blackhat. But that's the way this industry has always been. And I personally like it that way, because it keeps the majority from finding useful information, and the minority that choose to branch off from the flock find success.

Re: Oh.. So Black Hat is Dieing?

Originally Posted by cody41

Wow, buncha pm's coming in from people i haven't talked to in awhile..good to reconnect again Didn't really mean to go off and rant, but this place has been slowly evolving into what it is, as most of the old timers know, and I just felt like it was time to say something. It is what it is, I get that. But I figured if I was reaching anyone new who only knew blackhat as SENUKE, well, it was time for a mini education lol

I've said this more times than I can remember. BHW and BH in general used to mean something different. 5 years ago, BHW was full of nasty little tactics that made money. Big money. What happened I don't know but I suspect legal issues became involved for owner(s) of BHW and they decided it was in their best interest to stop discussions of what this forum was once truly about. Understandable.

That along with the fact that the forum has grown exponentially and has become populated with people from 3rd world nations who are hoping to just scratch out a few bucks a day. Eventually, niche marketing became the norm here and people went from making a grip of cash to people saying, "You need to build something long term". It's laughable. Of the thousands of posts from people hoping to build backlinks to their niche sites, I'd guess that 99% of them don't make enough money per day to buy a gallon of gas and their "long term, legit websites" will be gone within 3 months.